Weekly Update (10-20-2025) (Release Date Fixed)

A lot of progress this week.

EDIT: Really really sorry about this. I miscounted weeks when giving my tentative release date. It's going to be November 7th, not October 31st. When I was counting the days, didn't count the necessary week of testing properly. Sadly even if I pushed as hard as possible, I don't think I could do the 31st in practice. :/ To be clear, this is not a delay in terms of me being behind, just a mistake when I was calculating the time I need for the remaining stuff.

Honestly, offhand I want to say 22.5k words might be a record for a single week, though I'm not 100% sure on that. XD

I've adjusted some plans, though, as it's become apparent that, if I included everything I originally planned to in this update, it would end up longer than I wanted it to. Some things have been pushed to next update as a result. This unfortunately does likely include the narrative moment I had intended to use for the introduction of the Paragon Loyalty system and... well, the update name may change now. XD

But I think these adjustments are for the best, both in terms of keeping this update manageable in size when I'm feeling somewhat mentally low still and in terms of grouping certain kinds of content together next update. So, I am fairly happy with the adjustment here, though I apologize for having talked about a system that ended up pushed back. A lot of the stuff I've been waiting a long time for will still be here this update, though.

Moreover, with this shift, I can be relatively confident that I'll finish the update in the coming week. So, assuming no exigent circumstances, I'll finish the writing this week and switch over to combat design/testing next week. That makes October 31st a tentative release date. Halloween, yay? XD This was incorrect. I'll need a week for testing as usual, so the actual estimate is November 7th. Sorry again for the confusion.

Sadly, right now Mimo being done with the Lorena art in time for this update feels a little unlikely. :/ She hit an issue and asked someone for help but they seem to be taking a long time and she is... a little too willing to just wait for things sometimes. I'm a little frustrated here, but there's not much to be done about it. I told her that if it takes much longer, I might ask her to just work on something else in between, because there is quite a bit that we need art for and the delays on this one have already been pretty long. Either way, we'll see what happens there.

But on the whole, I have momentum and I'm looking forward to finishing this update! I think it will be a fun one. So, for now, back to work.